Delusions of Gender

When we think confidently compare the “female mind” and the “male mind”, we think of something stable inside the head of the person, the product of a “female” or “male” brain. p. xxvi

In other words, women and men may differ not so much in actual empathy but in “how empathetic they would like to appear to others (and, perhaps, to themselves)”, as Eisenberg put it to Schaffer. p. 16

The take-home message of these studies is that we can’t separate people’s empathizing ability and motivation from the social situation. p. 22

In other words, when we are not thinking of ourselves as “male” or “female”, our judgments are the same, and women and men alike are sensitive to the influence of social distance that, rightly or wrongly, pushes moral judgments in one direction or another along the care-justice continuum. p. 25

And it’s important to bear in mind that these jittery, self-defeating mechanisms are not characteristic of the female mind -- they’re characteristic of the mind under threat. p. 34

-referring to stereotype threat

What psychological processes lie behind this turning away from masculine interests? One possibility is that, as we learned in an earlier chapter, when stereotypes of women become salient, women tend to incorporate those stereotypical traits into their current self-perception. p. 44

Women prefer those kinds of dead-end jobs because they fit better with their family commitments, the companies typically claimed in their defense when their happily fulfilled female employees filed lawsuits against them. p. 69

As Tichenor points out, what this means is that “cultural expectations of what it means to be a good wife shape the domestic negotiations of unconventional earners and produce arrangements that privilege husbands and further burden wives.” p. 82

And yet as we’ve seen, higher fetal testosterone in nonclinical populations has not been convincingly linked with better mental rotation ability, systemizing ability, mathematical ability, scientific ability, or worse mind reading. p. 130

“Just because you see a response [in the brain] -- you don’t get to claim it’s hard-wired.” p. 171

When it comes to genes, you get what you get. But gene activity is another story: genes switch on and off depending on what else is going on. Our environment, our behavior, even our thinking, can all change what genes are expressed. p. 177

Biology can be said to define possibilities but not determine them; it is never irrelevant but it is also not determinant. p. 178

But the gender gap is narrowing all the time, and shows that mathematical eminence is not fixed, or hardwired or intrinsic, but it is instead responsive to cultural factors that affect the extent to which mathematical talent is identified and nurtured, or passed over, stifled, or suppressed in males and females. p. 184

The circuits of the brain are quite literally a products of your physical, social, and cultural environment, as well as your behavior and thoughts. p. 236

I adored this book. It will be immensely useful both online and in person in discussions over gender, especially when someone brings "science" into the discussion. Far from just being theory, Fine brings in a multitude of studies that back up her assertions, which more or less boil down to what we all learned in Gender Studies 101: gender is a social construct. 

Fine tackles the idea of brain size, math and science skills, "essential differences", neurosexism, among other issues. The book was by no means dry at all, but it didn't pander to the lazy reader, either. I felt challenged but not overwhelmed. 

One fact that I'll take from this book concerns gender priming. For example, when a woman is asked to fill out her sex and then take a test (I believe math, but I'll be safe and just say test), her performance sinks. Apparently just being reminded of your gender brings up anxieties related to stereotypes and can affect your scores. That's just one test! Imagine having that happen all the time.

This text would be useful to:

-any gender studies student

-anyone interested in Neuroscience (probably not those who actually teach/research, however)

-those who question assertions of male superiority in the sciences as natural

-anyone raising children